ABSTRACT
Over thirty years after the Canal Committee was set up to consider Lieutenant Schalch’s scheme for the drainage of Calcutta little had been done to address the problem, and it thus remained of critical importance. In the mid 1850s, work on the great sewerage scheme in London gave added impulse to the deliberations of municipal authorities. Late in 1855 W. Clark, Engineer to the Municipal Commissioners, submitted an ambitious scheme based on previous plans including those of Schalch and General Forbes. It was approved, but before work could be started the Bengal Government, which had commissioned its own plan, proposed both schemes be examined by an independent engineer. Rendel Brothers, Sanitary Engineers based in Westminster, one of whom was in India at the time, were chosen, and invited to submit a plan of their own. Of the two schemes, both of which planned to pump sewage into the Salt Lakes, the report favoured that of Clark, but unsurprisingly preferred their own proposal to allow the sewage under gravity to drain directly into the Hooghly. Notable here is the extent to which thinking was informed by the metropolitan experience.
